Doris Topsy-Elvord had never experienced prejudice while growing up in Long Beach, but she couldn’t stop weeping when she first heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s landmark speech during the March on Washington five decades ago.

“I cried during that whole speech when he talked about his dreams of the future,” said Topsy-Elvord, 82. “I didn’t think that was ever going to happen because some of the things my mother told me. She was raised in Mississippi and Arkansas. I was hoping it would happen, but I didn’t think it would.”

Brenda Gazzar is a multilingual multimedia reporter who has worked for a variety of news outlets in California and in the Middle East since 2000. She has covered a range of issues, including breaking news, immigration, law and order, race, religion and gender issues, politics, human interest stories and education. Besides the Los Angeles Daily News and its sister papers, her work has been published by Reuters, the Denver Post, Ms. Magazine, the Jerusalem Post, USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, The Cairo Times and others. Brenda speaks Spanish, Hebrew and intermediate Arabic and is the recipient of national, state and regional awards, including a National Headliners Award and one from the Associated Press News Executives' Council. She holds a dual master's degree in Communications/Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

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